Mississippi Flag Lawsuit Over Confederate Emblem May Be Revived

A Mississippi flag lawsuit may be revived after the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans agreed to hear arguments connected with the dismissed 2016 complaint filed by an attorney.

A federal district court judge kicked out the lawsuit by Carlos Moore last September, saying that the he lacked standing.

Moore, who is black, charged that the Confederate battle emblem, which is part of the Mississippi flag, is "state-sanctioned hate speech" and sends a message to African-Americans that they are second-class citizens, according to The Associated Press.

Moore, whose law offices are based in Grenada, Mississippi, named Gov. Phil Bryant in the lawsuit, claiming that the flag violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the 14th Amendment and could incite violence similar to the shooting in South Carolina in 2015.

Moore was referring to the June 17, 2015, shooting deaths of nine Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church members attending Bible study at the Charleston, South Carolina, church, which include Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a state representative.

Self-proclaimed white supremacist Dylann Roof was sentenced to death in federal court in January after he was found guilty of 33 counts in connection with the mass church shooting.

"Time is of the essence for the removal of the current state flag from all public display on public lands and adoption of a non-discriminatory state flag because there was a recent mass killing ... by a young white supremacist who was a Confederate battle flag sympathizer and militant," Moore wrote in the suit, according to The Clarion-Ledger. "Similar violent conduct could occur any day in Mississippi."

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, though, dismissed the lawsuit not quite six months ago, saying Moore had to prove he suffered injury from the flag being flown and the fear of imminent violence like that in South Carolina fell "short of Constitutional standing," wrote the Jackson Free Press last September.

Reeves, though, kept the door open for future complaints, saying that the "Confederate battle emblem has no place in shaping a new Mississippi, and is better left retired to history," the Free Press reported.

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